by Chuck Dixon
He took some comfort from them allowing him to pack a bag with a few days' worth of clothes. Of course, they might have done this to give him a false sense of his own security; to make him compliant. These were heartless men, ruthless men. But they were professionals. Their every action branded them as such. In that way, he felt a kinship with them: men skilled at an unpleasant task that required certain skills and a high level of expert detachment to perform like killing a fellow human being or sawing into the skull of a living subject.
They were parked before a Target. Jordan sat quietly in the back seat with the bigger man munching a protein bar behind the wheel. The smaller man exited hurriedly and took the passenger seat. He spoke to the driver in Russian. A brief exchange followed. The big man nodded his head toward the doctor.
Jordan held his breath.
“Find a motel,” the smaller man said.
Jordan exhaled.
They were keeping him for now.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Get all the intel you can. Intel is good. Even bad intel has some worth. Every lie has some truth in it. You need to learn the difference.”
43
Tobias Garrett shanked his ball into the trees. He muttered a curse as he started to hike after it.
“Rotten luck,” a member of his party called after him in accented English.
He was handicapping himself so as not to show up his guests. They were piss-poor golfers but he dearly wanted their business. No trouble falling on his ass a few times to give them the win if it meant getting the fat contract they offered.
His cell tingled in his pocket as he was using his driver to part the ferns in search of his little white Titleist. It wasn’t a number he recognized.
“Garrett. Lone Star Solutions. How can I make your world a safer place?”
“That shrapnel still giving you a hitch in your getalong?”
Levon Cade. Holy shit. Cade was identifying himself using a reference from a shared adventure in Manila. An RPG brought down their chopper. Garrett remembered little after that except that Cade was always there, always by him, until they were safely back aboard the Stennis.
“Only in the cold weather, brother.”
“Can we talk, Tobey?”
“This is a business line. I can call you back in two hours. The number on my display good for you?”
“Yeah. For a few days. Talk to you then.”
The call ended.
Tobias hacked away at the ball to free it from the rough, taking four swings, and still came to the green one point behind the best player in his foursome. Arabs were shit at golf. Tobias sank the putt to take the hole.
44
Levon pulled in at truck stops along the way back to Tampa. He collected throwaway cell phones, paying cash every time for the phones and calling cards.
The parting from Merry had been hard. It might have been better if she’d cried. She held it back, not letting him see how his leaving was tearing her up. He looked back once in the rearview. Merry turned to bury her head in Joyce’s shoulder. Gunny stood by waving.
A cell buzzed and lit up on the console by him. It was the phone he’d assigned to Tobey Garrett. He touched the tab on his earbud cord.
“Thanks for getting back to me. We’re secure.”
“Am I going to have to throw this phone in the lake after I hang up?”
“You might have to find a volcano to drop it into.”
“Shit,” Tobey hissed in his ear.
“I need intel. You’re private sector now. Is that going to be a problem?”
“I still have my resources. It’s what I trade on. What do you need?”
“A gang in Tampa. Family name Kolisnyk. K-O-L-I-S-N-Y-K. They go by Collins too. Not sure if that’s a legal name change.”
“Shit fuck, Cade. These are Russians?”
“Ukrainian. Same difference.”
“Mafiya or Vor?”
“They’re Vor.”
“You caught a small break, brother. They might wait to cut your balls off until after you’re dead. How can I help you?”
“The usual. A way in. A profile. Holdings. History. Organization, Associations. Broad strokes.”
“You working private sector yourself? Is this freelance?”
"One-time thing. I'm not printing business cards."
“Where have I heard that before? I don’t need to know anything else to know that you’re in over your head.”
“Can you do it, Tobey?”
“Give me until ten tonight. I’m in Austin. I’ll call you at this number.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Think of it as a portion of the down payment on all I owe you, brother.”
The call ended. Levon continued south on US 65.
Levon was pulled in to refuel the Rover an hour north of Tallahassee when Tobey called back with the goods. The traffic on US 10 was a river of light in the dark beyond the blinking glow of the fluorescents over the pump stations. Levon sat in the front seat and took notes on a pad as Tobey spoke. He filled five pages before they were done.
“That enough?” Tobey said.
“It’s all I needed.”
“You’re fucking with the wrong guys. Whatever you’re into, they’re not going to forget about you.”
“I know how to hide.”
“That’s harder when you’re alone. It’s expensive too. You have a kid, right? You thought of her?”
“It’s gone too far along for that.”
“Shit, brother.”
“It is what it is, Tobey.”
“If you need money you let me know. Hell, you live through this and need a job you let me know.”
“I’ll be in contact about some fresh paper. The works.”
“It’s yours. Good luck.”
The line went dead.
Levon pulled to the back of the lot where the semis were parked. He lay down in the back seat as best he could and slept until just before dawn.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You have to know more about your enemy than he knows about you. That means keeping your ass hid while you study his. That means limiting your encounters with him. The more times you fight the more he learns about your moves. Make the first fight the last fight whenever you can. Find him. Fuck him. And forget him.”
45
The dog was barking.
Delia Wiley elbowed her husband.
“Your dog’s barking.”
Joe Bob awakened. It was his dog when it barked or shit on the rug. He grunted and fell back to sleep.
“Still barking.” She nudged him again.
“Damn it,” he huffed, sitting up.
Joe Bob sat up in the king-size bed listening. Mojo was sure barking at something. Deer crossing the property. The neighbor on the next lot coming home late. Maybe someone poaching firewood off the sixty-acre conservation area that ringed the subdivision. Hoopies from the trailer park over by the county road started doing that every year when the weather turned cold.
Out in his fenced-in run Mojo went silent.
“He stopped. Deer probably,” Joe Bob said.
His wife moaned in the affirmative. They were back to sleep in moments.
Something nudged Joe Bob. Something hard pressed down into his shoulder. He grunted. It pressed again. Wrong side of the bed for Delia.
Joe Bob opened his eyes to see a big man standing over him. The man wore a black mask that covered his face. The man was pulling back the black pistol he’d used to prod Joe Bob awake. The man motioned for Joe Bob to sit up. Joe Bob saw that a smaller man, also in a mask, was on the bed straddling Delia and holding a pistol to her head. The smaller man nodded in greeting to Joe Bob.
The big man helped Joe Bob to his feet then shoved him into a padded chair in the corner of the room. The smaller man had Delia out of bed. She was mewling wordlessly. Joe Bob thought she was praying. The smaller man shoved her to the floor at Joe Bob's feet. She was whispering his name over and over again
.
“Joe Bob? Joe Bob? Joe Bob?”
The smaller man took a seat on the corner of the bed. The gun in his gloved fist at rest on his leg.
“You know this man Levon Cade?” Nestor said.
Joe Bob nodded. “He used to work for me.”
The smaller man shook his head lazily.
“He still works for you. You gave him a new job,” Nestor said.
“Okay,” Joe Bob said.
“You will tell him to stop this job you gave him. You will tell him to come home. When he has come home you will call us,” Nestor said. He plucked a strip of paper from the pocket of his leather jacket. He held it out for Joe Bob.
Joe Bob took the paper. It had a ten digit number hand printed on it.
“You understand? You tell him to stop working and come back home. You changed your mind. Okay? You understand what will happen unless you do this.”
Joe Bob nodded.
“Good,” Nestor said patting his knees before standing up. The two men walked for the door of the master bedroom.
“Sorry for the dog,” Karp said before stepping into the dark hallway.
Joe Bob fell to his knees on the carpet. He drew his wife to him and held her close, whispering assurances in her ear.
“Are they the men who took Jenna?” she said, breaking from his grasp.
Joe Bob stared at her, features drained of blood.
Jenna. In the face of his own death, he'd forgotten Jenna.
46
Merry leaned on the table and waved her hand before Gunny’s eyes. He was teaching her to play chess at the kitchen table.
“What are you doing?” Gunny said.
“Nothing,” she said and sat down.
“You don’t believe I’m really blind?”
“I believe you.”
“Then why were you waving your little hand in front of my face?”
“How do you know that if you can’t see?” she said.
“Why do you think I can see?” he said fingering the crenulations atop the rook to his right.
“You beat me three games without being able to see.”
“Maybe you’re so bad at this game even a blind man can beat you.”
"Unh-uh!"
“I know what a chess board looks like. I know how the pieces move. You let me know which piece you moved and I can see it in my head.”
“You ’member it?” she said in open awe.
“It’s not hard. Memory is a muscle. The more you work it the stronger it gets. Your move, little girl.”
“Did you teach my daddy chess? He told me you were his teacher,” she said and slid a pawn forward with his hand atop hers.
“I taught him all kinds of things. Chess was not one of them. He’s a good player though. Surprised he hasn’t taught you already,” he said, moving a pawn forward to block her path while freeing his bishop to move.
“What kind of school was it?”
“A very special school. A very hard school. My job was to teach men how to be smart even when they were hurt or scared or tired.”
“You scared my daddy?” She pulled her hand from under his.
“Not so’s you’d know it,” he said and left his hand hovering over the mane of the knight until she slid her hand to the piece once more and moved it to threaten his queen.
“Your daddy was my best student. He taught me as much as I taught him. You want to hear a story about your daddy?”
“Mm-hm.”
"We had your daddy locked up in a kind of jail. He had a secret and his orders were not to tell us his secret. No matter how hungry or tired or thirsty he got. It was like a game, you see. Only after a few days it doesn't feel like a game anymore. Most men hold out a week or maybe two. You know what your daddy did?"
“Unh-uh.”
“He escaped the first night. We locked him up and the next morning he was gone. And so was one of our trucks. And he took parts from all the other trucks so we couldn’t chase him. He broke our radio so we couldn’t call out for help. There we were, a whole school full of soldiers and marines stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way out and no way to tell anyone the trouble we were in.”
“Wow.”
“You bet wow. You know what happened next?”
“Unh-uh.”
"Your daddy drove back the next day with a box of Mexican takeout. Must have driven all night and all day back and forth to the closest town."
“Was he in trouble?”
“Hell, no. He did what he was supposed to. He kept his secret. Only maybe four other men made it through my class without giving up his secret. Your daddy is the only one who ever escaped on me.”
“Are you best friends, Gunny?”
“We’re brothers, little girl. You know what that makes me?”
“No?”
“Your uncle.”
“Cool,” she said and he felt her hand slide a bishop across the board to take his queen.
“I did not see that coming,” Uncle Gunny said.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Only one person hates a coward more than me and that’s God Almighty Himself.”
47
Joe Bob was freaking.
All alone in the shower, mud streaming from his legs, he was quietly falling apart. The mud was from digging a grave for Mojo in the early morning hours. The dog’s skull was crushed. The Rottweiler weighed in at sixty pounds and needed a big hole.
He sank to the floor, face in hands, and let the needle spray of scalding water beat down on him. He let himself cry. He allowed the pain welling up in his chest to come out in a bestial wail. The all-around glass walls misted to hide him from the world.
Delia was already gone. She’d packed two bags and took off for her sister’s place in Tulsa. She wasn’t staying in this house one more night. If he believed her, she might never come back. Delia demanded he pay for a charter and Joe Bob didn’t argue. Twenty grand for a deadhead flight to Oklahoma. He paid for that and the car that came and picked her up and took her away.
Joe Bob ran through his own options for heading for cover. He had responsibilities, people who relied on him, obligations. None of that meant anything if those two men came back.
And now he had to run.
There was no way to call off what he started when he called Levon Cade into his office.
He phoned Levon on the only number he had. He left messages until the voice mail was full.
Joe Bob didn’t know what Levon had done that brought those men into his home. He only asked Levon to find his daughter. He never asked how that would be accomplished. It hadn’t mattered to Joe Bob then. It sure as shit mattered now.
The men who came to see him knew why Levon was in Florida. They knew about Jenna. They knew where she was. They knew what happened to her. They were the ones Levon went to find. They offered him no solace, no answers, no hope of ever seeing Jenna again. All they did was promise that they would return if the search for Jenna continued.
That scared him. With the fright came shame. A father’s shame at his own helplessness to help his child. A man couldn’t turn from his flesh and blood to save his own skin. No man does that.
He raised his face to the spray and let the water wash his tears away then stood up and turned off the taps.
Joe Bob made up his mind. He wasn’t running and he wasn’t calling off what he’d started even if he could. Fuck these assholes. He’d unleashed Levon Cade on them and they’d have to deal with that. He hadn’t started this shit. They had. Whatever kind of hell Cade was raising down in Florida, they’d called it down on themselves.
Sometimes doing nothing at all is the best revenge.
48
It was a matter of trust, Dr. Jordan Roth told himself as he sat gagged with wrists duct taped to the hanging bar of a closet in room twenty-seven of the Golden Chariot Motor Lodge.
He thought he had an understanding with the two men who took him from the shelter of his old life and into a world of movement an
d chaos. They were accomplices now. He had cooperated with them willingly and with no resistance. But they insisted on treating him like a captive, like a child, still.
Something made them stop their pharmaceutical shopping spree. They quickly found a motel where they could pull their car directly up to the room. The place was run down, a hideous remnant of the ’50s. Loud music was playing from one of the rooms that was being used to house a party. They’d deposited him here in the closet and left.
His hands were tingling from blood loss. He tried shifting in the tight confines of the closet but found no relief. His legs were tired. His feet hurt from standing. But if he relaxed then his weight pulled the tape tight on his wrists and brought new pain.
The music and shouting and breaking glass stopped after a few hours. A strip of light beneath the closet door turned from watery blue to muted white as the sun filtered through the blinds over the windows in the bedroom outside.
A knock at the door followed by another. The jangle of a key ring, the turning of a lock. Someone was in the room and it wasn’t his captors. Lights were turned on outlining the closet door in a corona of yellow radiance. Water ran in the bathroom. A vacuum cleaner droned. A shadow grew to block the strip of light on the floor. The closet door swung open.
A diminutive woman in an oversized smock raised her eyebrows in mild shock. She was a Latina with almond eyes that regarded him without interest. He made mewling noises at her through the tape. Her only response was a sad shake of her head.
She reached up past him to retrieve a pair of fresh toilet paper rolls from the shelf above his head. After a prim nod, she turned away and shut the door.
The wheels of the vacuum cleaner squeaked away. The lights went out. The door closed and the lock snapped back in place.
He was alone again.
The doctor was awakened by noises from the room. The door opened and the big man was there. Jordan was cut free. They had McDonald’s breakfast takeout. He drank two cups of orange juice and wolfed down a greasy egg and bacon sandwich.